LabBook December 6, 2013

A x-ray image of Sammy Sosa’s bats after he was accused of corking them in 2003. University of Chicago Medicine radiologist Richard Baron, who was named chairman of the board of directors for the Radiological Society of North America this week, performed the scan and found out, happily, that Sammy wasn’t cheating.
Derrick Rose’s knees, reconstructed skulls, predicting flu outbreaks and more in this week’s LabBook, our weekly roundup of University of Chicago Medicine & Biological Sciences research news from our blogs, around campus and the internet.
Last two weeks on the blog:
- High-resolution CT scans help anthropologists at the Field Museum reconstruct a 150-century-old skull.
- Despite laws that give hospitals legal authority to proceed with organ procurement without consent of the registered donor’s family, a new study shows that organ procurement organizations’ implementation has been inconsistent and incomplete.
- We spoke to orthopedic surgeon Martin Leland on Derrick Rose’s latest season-ending knee injury.
- A study by Olaf Schneewind shows that staph bacteria achieve their immense success by hijacking a primary immune defense mechanism.
- Sarah Cobey and Jack Gilbert are using big data and computer modeling to predict disease outbreaks.
- The chairman of our Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Rehabilitation Medicine talks about the future of fixing fractures at UChicago Medicine.
From our partner blog UChicago Cancer Conversations:
- Peter O’Donnell’s 1200 Patients Project offers a glimpse of the future of genomic medicine.
- The lack of buzz surrounding Lung Cancer Awareness month is perplexing since lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the U.S.
- Dr. Christopher Wigfield offers a surgical perspective on the state of lung cancer.
- Richard Edelman, CEO of his namesake PR firm, will be matching #GivingTuesday contributions to the University of Chicago Comprehensive Cancer Center.
- The University of Chicago will be well represented at the 55th annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology.
- UChicago cancer investigators are using genomics to unravel the complexities of pancreatic cancer.
Research in the news:
- Cardiologist Matthew Sorrentino went on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight to talk about new guidelines for lower cholesterol issued by the American Heart Association.
- UChicago neuroscience grad student Mark Opal and Josiah Zayner, a former UChicago biophysicist now heading to NASA, want to create do-it-yourself kits to help citizen scientists test plants and other compounds from their local environment for their potential to make antibiotics.
- Finally, in an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune, sleep researcher Kristen Knutson writes that Sunday’s tragic train derailment is a wake-up call on the dangers of driving while sleepy.